DUCK AND COVER(UP): U.S. RADIATION TESTING ON HUMANS

by Tod Ensign and Glenn Alcalay

If you have any lingering thoughts that the government's failure to
disclose radiation experimentation on humans was driven by misguided
national security concerns, throw them in the nearest nuclear waste dump. At
least some officials knew what they were doing was unconscionable and were
ducking the consequences and covering their tails. A recently leaked Atomic
Energy Commission (AEC) document lays out in the most bare-knuckled manner
the policy of coverup. It is desired that no document be released which
refers to experiments with humans and might have adverse effect on public
opinion or result in legal suits. Documents covering such work field should
be classified `secret,' wrote Colonel O.G. Haywood of the AEC. *1 This
letter confirms a policy of complete secrecy where human radiation
experiments were concerned.

The Haywood letter may help explain a recently discovered 1953 Pentagon
document, declassified in 1975. The two-page order from the secretary of
defense ostensibly brought U.S. guidelines for human experimentation. in
line with the Nuremberg Code, making adherence to a universal standard
official U.S. policy. Ironically, however, the Pentagon document was
classified and thus was probably not seen by many military researchers until
its declassification in 1975.2

As these and a steady stream of similar reports confirm, for decades,
the U.S. government had not only used human guinea pigs in radiation
experiments, but had also followed a policy of deliberate deception and
cover up of its misuse of both civilians and military personnel in nuclear
weapons development and radiation research. While the Department of Energy (DoE)
has made some belated moves toward greater openness, there are clear
indications that other federal agencies and the White House have not yet
deviated from the time-honored tradition of deceit and self-serving secrecy.

CRACKS IN THE WALL OF SILENCE

The Clinton administration's first halting step toward taking
responsibility for past government misdeeds occurred on Pearl Harbor Day
1993, when DoE Secretary Hazel O'Leary confirmed that the AEC, her agency's
predecessor, had sponsored experiments in which hundreds of Americans were
exposed to radioactive material, often without their consent.

That O'Leary had decided to break with her agency's long tradition of
secrecy and deception was something of a surprise. After all, she came to
the job after a career in the nuclear power industry. But, confronted by a
media firestorm over the government's Cold War nuclear experiments, O'Leary
was left with few options.

Her decision to confirm some government abuses and reveal others was
precipitated by a series of reports by journalist Eileen Welsome in the
Albuquerque Tribune last November and the nearly simultaneous release of a
Government Accounting Office (GAO) report on radiation releases. *3
Following a six-year investigation, Welsome uncovered details of five
experiments in which plutonium was injected into 18 people without their
informed consent.

The GAO report, meanwhile, is an important finding that government
scientists deliberately released radioactive material into populated areas
so that they could study fallout patterns and the rate at which
radioactivity decayed. It profiles 13 different releases of radiation from
1948-52. All were part of the U.S. nuclear weapons development program. The
report concludes that other planned radioactive releases not documented here
may have occurred at ... U.S. nuclear sites during these years. *4 The
disclaimer suggests that a good deal of information about radiation
experiments remains locked away in government files.

Top DoE aide Dan Reicher pulled O'Leary out of a meeting last November
just before the story broke to warn her that People were injected with
plutonium back in the 1940s, and there's a newspaper in New Mexico that's
about to lay out the whole thing. *5 O'Leary provided information about
experiments at major universities, including MIT, the University of Chicago,
California, and Vanderbilt. Experimenters exposed about 2,000 Americans to
varying degrees of radiation. These numbers may grow as more information
about experiments is released.

INCIDENTAL FALLOUT

When O'Leary confirmed the human experiments, she also revealed two
other important activities. First, she admitted her agency had secretly
conducted 204 underground nuclear tests in Nevada from 1963-1990. These
clandestine blasts were in addition to the 800-plus nuclear tests publicly
announced during that period. DoE's secrecy may have deceived only Congress
and the U.S. public. In 1990, the Soviet Union's minister for atomic energy
produced an estimate of U.S. detonations that was very close to the actual
number including the secret ones.

O'Leary's other significant disclosure concerned DoE's massive stock of
weapons-grade plutonium: 33.5 metric tons of stockpiled plutonium and
another 55.5 metric tons deployed in nuclear warheads and for similar uses.
*6 This admission calls into question DoE's past claims that national
security required the continued operation of unsafe plutonium processing
plants to produce unnecessary stockpiles of plutonium.

O'Leary's disclosures about the human experiments have produced a
torrent of publicity. Much less attention has been paid to her admissions
about secret nuclear tests and plutonium stocks, which have much greater
long-term implications for nuclear weapons policy.

DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE

O'Leary's promises of full disclosure by DoE aside, *7 one well-placed
source within the agency suggested that the Pentagon, NASA and the CIA were
just going through the motions. *8 For example, the CIA announced in January
1994 that after searching its files it could locate only one reference to
human experimentation with radiation. Former CIA official Scott Breckenridge
charged that in 1973, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, chief of the chemical division of
the CIA's Technical Services Division, may have destroyed many secret files,
including those on human radiation experiments. *9

The history of partial revelation and near complete inaction is long. In
1975, the Rockefeller Commission first revealed that the CIA may have
conducted radiation experiments, *10 but the records if not destroyed have
yet to be uncovered. William Colby, CIA director from 1973 to 1975, recently
said, I recall the various drug tests, which were scandalous, but nothing
about radiation. *11 So far, the institutional memories of the implicated
agencies appear to be as conveniently spotty as Colby's.

SECRET EXPERIMENTS

While officials have dallied, dedicated reporters, angry victims, and a
handful of government whistleblowers have exposed a pattern of secrecy and
deception. A brief sampling of some of the macabre, secret human experiments
uncovered by Welsome and others is chilling.

* In 1945, Albert Stevens, a 58-year old California house painter
suffering from a huge stomach ulcer, was injected with doses of plutonium
238 and 239 equivalent to 446 times the average lifetime exposure. *12
Doctors recommended an operation and told his children he had only six
months to live. For the next year, scientists collected plutonium-laden
urine and fecal samples from Stevens and used that data in a classified
scientific report, A Comparison of the Metabolism of Plutonium in Man and
the Rat. There is little doubt scientists knew of the danger: The problem of
chronic plutonium poisoning is a matter of serious concern for those who
come in contact with this material, the report concluded.13 AEC officials in
1947 refused to release the information because it contains material, which
in the opinion of the [AEC], might adversely affect the national interest.
14

* In 1947, doctors injected plutonium into the left leg of Elmer Allen,
a 36-year-old African American railroad porter. Three days later, the leg
was amputated for a supposed pre-existing bone cancer. Researchers analyzed
tissue samples to determine the physiology of plutonium dispersion. *15 In
1973, scientists summoned Allen to the Argonne National Laboratory near
Chicago, where he was subjected to a follow-up whole body radiation scan,
and his urine was analyzed to ascertain lingering levels of plutonium from
the 1947 injection. *16

* Beginning in 1949, the Quaker Oats Company, the National Institutes of
Health, and the AEC fed minute doses of radioactive materials to boys at the
Fernald School for the mentally retarded in Waltham, Massachusetts, to
determine if chemicals used in breakfast cereal prevented the body from
absorbing iron and calcium. The unwitting subjects were told that they were
joining a science club. The consent form sent to the boys' parents made no
mention of the radiation experiment. *17

* In 1963, 131 prison inmates in Oregon and Washington state were paid
about $200 each to be exposed to 600 roentgens of radiation (100 times the
allowable annual dose for nuclear workers). They signed consent forms
agreeing to submit to X-ray radiation of my scrotum and testes, but were not
warned about the possibility of contracting testicular cancer. Doctors later
performed vasectomies on the inmates to avoid the possibility of
contaminating the general population with irradiation-induced mutants. *18

* From 1960-71, in experiments which may have caused the most deaths and
spanned the most years, Dr. Eugene Saenger, a radiologist at the University
of Cincinnati, exposed 88 cancer patients to whole body radiation. *19 Many
of the guinea pigs were poor African-Americans at Cincinnati General
Hospital with inoperable tumors. All but one of the 88 patients have since
died. *20 There is evidence that scientists forged signatures on the consent
forms for the Cincinnati experiments. Gloria Nelson testified before the
House that her grandmother, Amelia Jackson, had been strong and still
working before she was treated by Dr. Saenger. Following exposure to 100
rads of whole body radiation (about 7,500 chest X-rays), Amelia Jackson bled
and vomited for days and became permanently disabled. Jackson testified that
the signa- ture on her grandmother's consent form was forged.21

WATCHING THE BOMB

While researchers were running tests on relatively small numbers of
hapless civilians, the military was conducting a series of potentially
lethal experiments on a massive scale. From 1946-63, the military ordered
more than 200,000 active-duty GIs to observe one or more nuclear bomb tests
either in the Pacific or at the Nevada Test Site. The 195,000 GIs who served
as part of the occupation force in Hiroshima and Nagasaki may also have
suffered the effects of radiation. A vast body of information about nuclear
bomb testing and its effects on humans has yet to see the light of day, but
some individual accounts are harrowing.

One atomic veteran, Jim O'Connor, provided a detailed account of the
Turk blast at the Nevada test site in March 1955. O'Connor reported seeing
someone crawling from a bunker near ground-zero after the blast:

"There was a guy with a mannequin look who had apparently crawled behind the bunker. Something like wires were attached to his arms and his face
was bloody.
I smelled an odor like burning flesh. The rotary camera I'd seen
[earlier] was going `zoom, zoom, zoom' and the guy kept trying to get up." *22

At this point, O'Connor fled and was picked up by AEC rad-safety
monitors who took him to a hospital where he was treated for radiation
overdose. The Defense Nuclear Agency refused to confirm or deny O'Connor's
account, although there are reports which refer to a volunteer officer
program at several of the test blasts.

Navy officer R.A. Hinners was another nuclear guinea pig. *23 Only a
mile from ground zero, he and seven other volunteers witnessed the
detonation of a 55-kiloton bomb (four times the Hiroshima blast) on April
25, 1953. While the Army's report, Exercise Desert Rock VII and VIII, covers
the 1957 test series and notes that the observers suffered no adverse
effects, the Pentagon has not released any material relating to the use of
volunteers at any other tests. *24

DELIBERATE ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION RELEASES

Nuclear researchers did not limit themselves to small groups of selected
guinea pigs or large groups of soldiers under orders. The U.S. government
also deliberately released radioactive materials into the atmosphere,
endangering military personnel and untold numbers of civilians.
Unsurprisingly, the people exposed during these tests were not informed.

In four of these tests at the AEC's facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico,
bomb-testers set off conventional explosives to send aloft clouds of
radioactive material, including strontium and uranium. When the AEC tracked
the clouds across northern New Mexico, it detected some radioactivity 70
miles away. According to a Los Alamos press officer, there may have been as
many as 250 other such tests during the same period.25

Nor was this intentional release the largest. During the December 1949
Green Run test at the Hanford (Washington) Nuclear Reservation, the AEC
loosed thousands of curies of radioactive iodine-131 several times the
amount released from the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster into the atmosphere
simply to test its recently installed radiological monitoring equipment.
Passing over Spokane and reaching as far as the California-Oregon border,
Green Run irradiated thousands of downwinders, as civilians exposed to the
effects of airborne radiation tests are known, and contaminated an enormous
swath of cattle grazing and dairy land. *26 A team of epidemiologists is now
looking into an epidemic of late-occurring thyroid tumors and other
radiogenic disorders among the downwind residents in eastern Washington
state.

The plant's emissions control systems were turned off during the
experiment, releasing into the atmosphere almost twice as much radioactive
iodine-131 as originally planned. The GAO report notes that the off-site
population was not forewarned [nor] made aware of the [test] for several
decades. It also notes that although adverse weather patterns kept the
radiation from spreading as far as expected, monitoring Air Force planes
detected hot clouds over 100 miles northeast of the site. *27

SACRIFICIAL LAMBS

Even when the government took steps to create the appearance of
openness, it was less than candid.

You are in a very real sense active participants in the Nation's atomic
test program, proclaimed a 1955 AEC propaganda booklet widely disseminated
to downwind neighbors of the Nevada Test Site. Some of you have been
inconvenienced by our test operations, and at times some of you have been
exposed to potential risk from flash, blast, or fallout. You have accepted
the inconvenience or the risk without fuss, without alarm, and without
panic. *28

The AEC's concern for inconveniences or honesty, however, did not extend
to the 4,500 Utah and Nevada sheep who died mysteriously in 1953 after
exposure to fallout. The AEC denied any causal connection between the
sheep's exposure to radioactive fallout from the 1953 Upshot-Knothole tests
and their deaths. *29 In a 1956 trial, Utah and Nevada sheep ranchers lost
their lawsuit against the government.

But years later, Harold Knapp, a former AEC scientist who analyzed the
1953 sheep deaths, challenged the AEC's accounts. The simplest explanation,
he told a 1979 congressional committee, of the primary cause of death in the
lambing ewes is irradiation of the ewe's gastrointestinal tract by beta
particles from all the fission products ingested by the sheep along with
open range forage. *30

In a 1982 retrial, A. Sherman Christensen, the same judge who presided
over the 1956 trial, noting that fraud was committed by the U.S. Government
when it lied, pressured witnesses, and manipulated the processes of the
court, ruled for the ranchers. *31

PARADISE LOST

U.S. government callousness and deception extended halfway around the
world. Another nuclear experiment was underway in the Marshall Islands a de
facto strategic colony of the U.S. located in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean. Between 1946 and 1958, the U.S. exploded 67 atomic and hydrogen bombs
at Bikini and Enewetok, two Marshall group atolls. Once again, the full
impact and consequences of this experiment would not be disclosed for
decades, and then only reluctantly.

The largest and dirtiest of the Marshall Islands blasts was code-named
Bravo. At 15 megatons more than 1,000 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb
Bravo rained lethal radioactive fallout over thousands of unsuspecting
islanders under circumstances which remain mysterious. The people of
Rongelap atoll were especially hard-hit. They were evacuated from their home
islands two days after Bravo, following the absorption of massive doses of
high-level fallout.

Following the Rongelap evacuation, the AEC considered repatriating the
islanders to their home atoll in order to gather vital fallout data. In
1956, Dr. G. Failla, chair of the AEC's Advisory Committee on Biology and
Medicine, wrote to AEC head Lewis Strauss: The Advisory Committee hopes that
conditions will permit an early accomplishment of the plan [to return the
Rongelap people]. The Committee is also of the opinion that here is the
opportunity for a useful genetic study of the effects on these people. 32
Three years later, Dr. C.L. Dunham, head of the AEC's Division of Biology
and Medicine, reiterated the AEC's interest. Studying the Rongelap victims
of the Bravo blast will, he wrote, ... contribute to estimates of long term
hazards to human beings and to an evaluation of the recovery period
following a single nuclear detonation. *33 Having established the
near-perfect longitudinal human radiation experiment in 1954, DoE continues
to compile data from their Marshallese subjects.

It appears that AEC was guilty of both negligently disregarding the
well-being of the Marshallese and then lying about its actions. On February
24, 1994, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chair of the House Committee on
Natural Resources, convened a hearing on Bravo. Recalling weather data that
demonstrated prior knowledge that islanders would receive substantial
fallout, and that winds had not unexpectedly shifted, *34 Rep. Miller
declared that We have deliberately kept that information from the
Marshallese. That clearly constitutes a cover-up. *35

A PATTERN OF IGNORED DISCLOSURES

The record of U.S. government lies, misrepresentation, and cover-ups to
support its nuclear research program is incontrovertible, if not yet
complete. From the inception of the U.S. nuclear program, government policy
has placed military and scientific interests above both the well-being of
thousands of people and the truth. And, Secretary O'Leary's evident openness
notwithstanding, the government's record in responding to earlier
disclosures is not reassuring. When faced with damaging disclosures in the
past, the government attempted to stonewall. When that would not suffice,
the government only grudgingly responded. A few examples:

* In 1980, Congress issued a stinging report, The Forgotten Guinea Pigs,
which concluded that the AEC chose to secure, at any cost, the atmospheric
nuclear weapons testing program rather than to protect the health and
welfare of the residents of the area who lived downwind from the site. *36

* In 1982, the New York Times provided evidence that policy-makers
foresaw dangers and acted to cover them up. The story included a statement
by a former Army medic, Van R. Brandon, of Sacramento, that his medical unit
kept two sets of books of radiation readings at the Nevada Test Site during
the 1956-57 tests. One set was to show that no one received an [elevated]
exposure, Brandon told the paper. The other set of books showed ... the
actual reading. That set was brought in a locked briefcase every morning, he
recalled. *37 DoE officials simply denied Brandon's allegations, and no
further investigation was pursued. *38

* In 1986, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) released a report detailing
human radiation experiments that AEC and its successors conducted between
the 1940s and the 1970s. Many were designed to measure the effects of
radiation on humans, and according to Markey, American citizens thus became
nuclear calibration devices for experimenters run amok. 39 The Markey
report, American Nuclear Guinea Pigs, described 31 grisly experiments
involving 695 people who were captive audiences or populations that some
experimenters frighteningly might have considered `expendable.' 40

When the Reagan administration refused to investigate the disclosures,
the Markey report was quickly forgotten. There was a massive public
relations relationship that existed between the [Reagan] administration, the
defense contractors and experimenters in America, charged Markey, that
worked very effectively throughout the 1980s. I'd say something, and I'd get
attacked, and it would be a one-day story. *41

A LONG, HARD ROAD TO JUSTICE

From the beginning of the nuclear age, the federal government not only
ignored or suppressed knowledge of abuses in the nuclear experimental
program, it also fought all attempts to hold it accountable for damages. A
series of Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1950 bars both atomic
veterans and downwinders from suing the federal government. *42 Veterans are
denied the right to sue for injuries suffered while on active duty because
the Court believes that this would interfere with military necessity and
national security. *43

Downwinders have also encountered many obstacles in their long struggle
for medical studies and compensation. One group of Utah residents who lived
under the fallout during the 1950s and early 1960s finally succeeded in
bringing their federal lawsuit to trial in 1982. They scored an important
victory when the trial judge found the bomb tests were responsible for their
cancers and awarded them damages. *44 But the appeals court reversed this
verdict by re-defining the discretionary function exception to the Federal
Tort Claims Act to make the government immune from lawsuits of this kind.
*45 In essence, the court held that setting off nuclear bombs was within the
discretionary power of high-ranking officials and could not be questioned in
a lawsuit for damages.

After the federal appeals court stripped the downwinders of their
victory, in 1990, Congress finally stepped in and adopted the Radiation
Exposure Compensation Act for downwinders and some groups of uranium miners.
Claimants must document residence in the fallout area and that they suffer
from one of 13 cancers linked to radia-tion exposure. The program,
administered by the Department of Justice, places a ceiling of $50,000 per
claim, although many awards were smaller. Justice granted 818 claims out of
1,460 which were submitted as of January 1994.46 In 1988, Congress acted on
behalf of atomic veterans, forcing the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
to establish a limited compensation plan with a $75,000 cap. It provides
presumptive disability to veterans who can prove that they suffer from one
of a list of 13 cancers (e.g., bone, breast, skin, stomach, thyroid,
leukemia, etc.), and that they were present during one or more nuclear test
blasts.

Of more than 15,000 veterans' claims filed as of January 1994, only
1,401 have been approved, indicating that most claimants are unable to
qualify under the terms of the program. *47 One problem confronting many
veterans is inaccurate or missing military records that omit service at a
nuclear test site. *48 Another is to prepare a radiation dose reconstruction
that estimates the amount of exposure the veteran received. Many vets have
challenged the accuracy of dose estimates prepared by a private contractor,
Science Applications International. This privately held research corporation
includes among its stockholders Defense Department officials including
Secretary William Perry and Deputy Secretary John Deutch, and one-time
nominee Bobby Ray Inman. The Defense Department has little to say about
potential conflicts of interest. We're going to decline to comment on this.
I don't think we would have anything that would be meaningful to say, said
Pentagon spokesman Capt. Michael Doubleday. *49

A final obstacle is that just having cancer isn't enough; veterans must
prove they are disabled by it.

WHAT WILL CLINTON DO?

The Clinton administration is about to undergo a test of its own. The
key question will be how it defines who will be considered a nuclear test
victim for purposes of health research and compensation. Given the
decades-long record of coverup and callousness, there is little reason to
assume that the recent revelations concerning human experimentation will
produce any lasting benefit for the tens of thousands of veterans and
civilians harmed by nuclear weapons testing and radiation experiments over
the past half century let alone the estimated five million U.S. citizens
exposed to dangerous levels of radiation during the Cold War. *

Early indications are that the White House will stake out a restrictive
position. DoE head O'Leary also appears to be seeking some remedy short of
compensating all categories of victims. So, apparently, is the GAO.

The GAO's report on atmospheric radiation releases provides a glimpse of
the emerging strategy. In assessing the significance of the Green Run test,
the GAO struck a cautious note. The test [was not] intended to be a
radiation experiment or a field test of radiobiological effects. [After]
examining still classified passages [we] found that they don't refer to any
such intentions. *50 This interpretation could provide the basis for a
restrictive reading of who is entitled to compensation and follow-up health
studies.

STACKING THE DECK

The Clinton administration may also be moving to head off potentially
monstrous payouts to victims. To deal with the predicted avalanche of
claims, as well as to fend off adverse publicity, the administration has
established an advisory committee and an interagency working group to define
policy. The advisory committee's mission statement, as well as the
backgrounds of some of the people appointed to the panels, give victims
cause for skepticism.

The President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments is
composed of scientists, medical ethicists, and lawyers and is chaired by Dr.
Ruth Faden of Johns Hopkins University. The White House announcement stated
that its mission is to evaluate the ethical and scientific standards of
government sponsored human experiments which involved intentional exposure
to ionizing radiation. *51 (emphasis added) When read in conjunction with
the GAO report's cautious conclusion, this language appears to sharply limit
possible claimants.

And one of the advisory panel members, Washington, D.C. lawyer Kenneth
Feinberg, has credentials that have raised eyebrows. Feinberg played a
controversial role in forging an 11th-hour settlement of the class action
lawsuit against Agent Orange manufacturers in 1984. Working at the direction
of trial judge Jack Weinstein in Brooklyn, New York, Feinberg helped ram
through a $180 million settlement. Although the figure seems large, it is
grossly inadequate in light of the 250,000 veteran-claimants and the
severity of their disabilities. Since the settlement, Judge Weinstein has
blocked every subsequent lawsuit against the Agent Orange makers even for
veterans whose cancer appeared years after the settlement was reached. *

The Interagency Working Group has representatives from every federal
agency involved in radiation research and also includes a lawyer member
whose past clients raise questions about his impartiality. Joel Klein,
recently named White House Deputy Legal Counsel, was previously a partner in
Klein Farr Smith & Taranto, a Washington, D.C. law firm which represented a
number of corporate defendants in cases involving the due process rights of
class action members. In 1985, Klein's firm won a Supreme Court decision in
Phillips Petroleum v. Shutts, which narrowly interpreted the rights of
claimants in class actions. Klein also has a case pending before the Supreme
Court, Ticor Title v. Brown, which experts expect will further diminish the
rights of injured parties in class action suits.

CLOUDED HORIZONS

It is too early to tell what role either Feinberg or Klein will play in
determining compensation for nuclear test victims, but their histories don't
lend cause for optimism. And given the administration's efforts at damage
control, some advocates of radiation victims are dubious that the recent
disclosures will bring any more change than those in the past. Rob Hager, a
public interest lawyer in Washington, has been fighting the DoE for years.
He has waged an 11-year legal battle on behalf of the widow of Joe Harding,
who developed cancer after working at a DoE uranium processing plant in
Paducah, Kentucky.

The DoE's approach to compensation is a scorched earth policy; settle no
claims and litigate to the hilt, Hager charges. They've changed their head,
but it doesn't seem to be connected to the body. *52 Eileen Welsome agrees.
The Albuquerque journalist, who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for her
reporting on this issue, was asked what she learned. She responded, The DoE
of today is no different from the DoE of 50 years ago. It's an
obstructionist agency; it doesn't follow the law. I think it's an agency
that bears careful scrutiny and constant scrutiny. 53

***************************

THE BUCHENWALD TOUCH

***************************

The still-emerging history of nuclear experimentation raises important
issues of medical ethics and calls into question the scientific community's
sensitivity to and awareness of these issues. It also raises the question of
whether these experimenters, in furthering the Pentagon's military and
security demands, violated international standards on human experimentation.
Even at this late date, it seems that some scientists involved are unable to
see any problems with their behavior. Patricia Durbin, a scientist at the
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California who participated in plutonium
experiments, recently said:

"They were always on the lookout for somebody who had some kind of
terminal

disease who was going to undergo an amputation. These things were not
done to

plague people or make them sick and miserable.

They were not done to kill people. They were done to gain potentially
valuable

information. The fact that they were injected and provided this valuable
data should

almost be a sort of memorial rather than something to be ashamed of. It
doesn't

bother me to talk about the plutonium injectees because of the value of
the

information they provided. *1"

And Dr. Victor Bond, a medical physicist and doctor at Brookhaven
National Laboratory, recently defended the Fernald experiments, in which
retarded children were deliberately given radioactive substances in their
breakfast cereal. A question arose as to whether chemicals in breakfast
cereals interfered with the uptake of iron or calcium in children. An answer
was needed, declared Bond. In reference to the entire series of cold war
nuclear experiments, Bond offered that It's useful to know what dose of
radiation sterilizes; it's useful to know what different doses of radiation
will do to human beings. *2

While Drs. Bond and Durbin rationalized such programs, other scientists
have spoken out. Referring to the Cincinnati experiments in which 88 cancer
patients were exposed to massive whole body doses of radiation, Dr. David
Egilman, a former Cincinnati faculty member, said, The study was designed to
test the effects of radiation on soldiers. It was known that whole-body
radiation wouldn't treat the patients' cancer. What happened was one of the
worst things this government has done to its citizens. *3 And Dr. Joseph
Hamilton, a neurologist at the University of California Hospital in San
Francisco, referred to his own human radiation experiments in the 1940s as
having a little of the Buchenwald touch. *4

THE BUCHENWALD TOUCH is not limited to Cold War-related experiments. In
what has come to be known as the Tuskegee Study, 412 African American
sharecroppers suffering from syphillis were rounded up in Tuskegee, Alabama,
in the early 1930s. For forty years, the men were never told what had
stricken them while doctors from the U.S. Public Health Service observed the
ravages of the disease, from blindness and paralysis to dementia and early
death. Even after penicillin proved to be an effective treatment for
syphilis, they were left untreated. *5

Nor are such experiments a thing of the past. Recent congressional
hearings revealed studies on schizophrenia in the late 1980s where doctors
intentionally worsened patients' symptoms, causing relapses and leading to
the death by suicide of at least one of the patients. Dr. Michael Davidson,
who led a study at the VA Hospital in the Bronx, defended the study, saying,
it would not be advisable to [warn] the patients about psychosis or relapse.
*6

===========================================

Resources on Experiments Performed by the Atomic Energy
Commission and the Department of Defense

Specific Experiments

Between 1945-1949, 820 poor pregnant Caucasian women were given tracer
doses of radioactive iron in experiments performed at Vanderbilt University.
Office of Human Radiation Experiments Oral Histories of
Dr. Karl Z. Morgan and
Waldo E. Cohn provide background on this experiment. See also
Chapter 7
Conclusion of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
Final Report.